Aedan Cousland's Journal
by SoCalhoun
Summary: Novel-length journal of a playthrough. Intended for those who'd enjoy experiencing the story of Dragon Age: Origins without actually playing the game.
1. Chapter 1

Readers:

This is going to be rather a long haul. Please read these notes before reading or commenting on the story, so you know what to expect!

**Why this is here: **I'm a novelist IRL (not a famous one, just one of the many thousands who scrape by in relative obscurity). I am posting this here because some of my patrons wanted to see it, and I'm not comfortable accepting money for fic even indirectly. I can't associate it with my real name, because I prefer that my agent not know I've written so many words that can't earn us any money.

**Intended audience: **Any readers are welcome, of course, but I am not actively seeking feedback. The intended audience for this "journal" is people who enjoy my writing and who have not played the game, but would enjoy experiencing the story and setting - or those who have played DA:O but want to experience a Thedas (the Dragon Age Setting, "theDAS", for those who didn't know) that is built from very different game choices.

**What is this exactly:** It's simply a journal of a playthrough. There honestly isn't much here for those heavily into DA fic. This is not DA fan fiction in the classic sense, in that it isn't imaginative, just descriptive. Because part of my goal was to help non-gamers have the "Dragon Age experience," I haven't departed from in-game canon and am writing very little that occurs "offscreen." It is also going to be VERY long. Epic fantasy-length.

**What non DA players should know about lore: **I'll try to present the lore in the journal in a way that assumes you know nothing, but I'd like to go over a few things here just to better orient my intended audience. If you see something like "9:30 Dragon," that's not a day, it's a year. It's also redundant, which drives me batty. Every age (100 years) is named by the Chantry. Dragon is the 9th age, so you don't technically need both the 9 and the Dragon in there. That's how they always write it in Thedas, though.

Think of the Chantry as the church. Think of Andraste as a female Jesus who was burned at the stake instead of crucified. The Chantry controls mages in Thedas, to varying degrees in different areas, but most of the southern nations have "Circles of Magi," extremely secure locations where templars (holy warriors of the Chantry) strictly supervise mages to ensure they don't get possessed by demons (something that can only happen to mages). Only mages have enough connection to the Fade (realm of spirits/demons) to allow demon possession, and a demon-possessed mage is—well, it's very bad. Very, very bad. Is the Chantry's solution worse? Time will tell.

The Chantry tells us that a group of mages from Tevinter (to the north) once broke into the Fade and tried to usurp the seat of the Maker. They were cast back down to earth as the first darkspawn: creatures of evil and destruction who have four times risen to overwhelm Thedas in a Blight. Each time, a group known as the Grey Wardens has led the people of Thedas to victory by destroying the Archdemon leading the darkspawn horde.

Ferelden is the Andrastian nation where this journal is set, semi-English in feel. They were once conquered by the Orlesians (pseudo-French, also Andrastian), but regained their independence within the memory of many who are alive during the period of this story. Our protagonist does not remember living under Orlesian rule, but his parents sure as hell do.

Ferelden has a sort of feudal system whose ranks in order are king, teyrn, arl, bann. These ranks are unique to Ferelden. At the start of our story, Ferelden has only two teyrns, and one of them is the father of our protagonist.

That should be all you need to know to get started. Now that you've been properly warned and informed, enjoy the journal of Aedan Cousland.

* * *

_Aedan Cousland began keeping a journal in 9:16 Dragon, at the age of ten, apparently as an exercise from his tutor Aldous in composition and penmanship. From the very beginning, young Aedan addressed his imagined future audience as "unfortunate reader," anticipating that the only one who might see his private writings would be a low-ranking Chantry scholar commissioned to wade through volumes and volumes of tedium to write a posthumous biography of an insignificant second son. _

_As young Aedan's perspective matured and he began to find more matters too trivial to record, the volumes began to contain more and more blank pages. The 9:29 volume in fact contains only four entries in total, and in them the young man's restlessness and dissatisfaction with his routine life fairly bleeds between the lines. And then came the year in which his memoirs suddenly explode into multiple volumes..._

**Journal of Aedan Cousland**

**9:30 Dragon**

* * *

9 Drakonis

Location: Highever Castle

Weather: Spring has gone running back behind winter's skirts for a day.

Health: Good

Temper: Foul

Events: Visit of Arl Howe and Grey Warden Duncan

It is a sad day indeed when a young man loses all trust in the wisdom and good judgment of his elders. Today is that day for me.

When Father passes, Fergus will be the second most important man in Ferelden (not counting the royal family), which is why he has been trained all his life to manage a teyrnir and I to serve as a general in its defense. Although I would be the first to admit that for many years I resented being born second, if pressed I would have said - would still say - that Fergus and I have grown splendidly into our roles. I am still a better leader than warrior, and Fergus the reverse, but we are both well-prepared for our respective destinies.

So why, unfortunate reader, has Father ordered me to stay and manage the teyrnir while he and Fergus run off to fight darkspawn to the south? What manner of idiot sends the heir into battle and leaves the spare safely at home playing teyrn? Is he trying to incite resentment in both of us? Give his eldest a teasing taste of adventure and his second-born a heady sip of power, then expect them both to meekly trade places again by summer?

To make matters worse, a Grey Warden is here - they have a tendency to run about recruiting when darkspawn show themselves in numbers - and Father rather swiftly shut down the Warden's idea that I might be an excellent candidate for the order. Warden Duncan is here to test Ser Gilmore, it seems, and I am not even allowed a trial. Even a second-born is too "precious," apparently, to be squandered on such petty things as an oath to save the world from evil.

Arl Howe is visiting while he awaits his troops; when they arrive, they shall join Father's in the field at Ostagar. I suppose I should count my blessings that the arl left the rest of his family safely in Amaranthine. I'd have liked to see Nathaniel again, but I find myself in a precarious situation regarding Delilah. For years I have implied that I remained unmarried because Delilah was not yet of age... and now apparently she's come of age. Time, you damned thief.

I'll need to come up with an excuse to reject her that won't sour relations between Highever and Amaranthine. Despite the fondness Howe claims his daughter has for me, neither she nor I have anything to gain from such a union. She'd be married to a warrior, likely end up a widow, and I'd be expected to sire children on a woman I feel as much attraction to as I do to the scarecrow in the wheatfield.

Sadly, I have already met all of the women my father believes suitable matches for me, and none of them interest me in the slightest, so I'd rather not marry at all. No matter; Fergus has a fine start at making more Couslands.

Speaking of which, poor Oriana is worried half out of her mind about Fergus. Oren, like all children his age, just wants to know what his father will bring back for him, but Antivan women's feelings run so deeply! Oriana's in such a state that I'm going to have to avoid her for the entirety of Fergus's absence lest my concern cause me to behave too affectionately toward her. That crack in my heart has long since mended, but it's still difficult to see her in such distress.

Maker forgive me for the way my mind wanders in worry, myself. I've long known that the death of my brother would open a path to both of my thwarted adolescent dreams, but the horror of imagining life without him has always splashed cold water on such musings. Now his loss looms as a very real possibility, and if I don't fill my mind with something else while he is gone I may be stark raving mad by the time he returns.

* * *

16 Drakonis

Location: Hinterlands  
Weather: Cold

Health: Good

Temper: Despondent

Events: Fall of Highever Castle, Recruitment into Grey Wardens

I am traveling with Duncan of the Grey Wardens, soon to join the battle at Ostagar as one of them. If Fergus still lives, I shall find him there and tell him that his wife and son are murdered.

I woke to the sound of Bricks growling, low and ominous, in the small hours of the night not long after my last entry. Two of Howe's men burst in upon me before I had even dressed. Thank the Maker that Bricks was able to dispense with them so that I could arm and armor myself and slaughter my way to my family's rooms, for all the good it did anyone.

Howe's men spared no one. The castle was as drenched with gore as a battlefield: every room, every bed hanging, every bookshelf splattered red. Howe's men cut through not just my family but nurses and cooks and guards and lady's maids, as mindless as scythes at harvest time. I still have no idea why.

I do see how the absence of our troops presented an opportunity, but the thoroughness of the violence - no prisoners, no hostages - suggests something other than merely ambition, some long-festering hatred that blindsided us all. But Howe was always so cordial to us, jocular, even. He and Father fought side by side in the rebellion against Orlais. I do not understand. May never understand.

And I am still not certain how I feel about Warden Duncan's aid in my escape. I am humbled to be chosen for the Grey Wardens, but I resent how opportunistically Duncan recruited me as my father lay bleeding out on the stone floor of his castle. The Warden told us that the evil that rises in this world dwarfs even Howe's massacre, that the coming Blight must be stopped, and that a man of my strength and courage could make all the difference. I was in no state of mind to argue this or any other point, and surely he knew that.

For a day or two afterward I quietly suspected him of complicity with Howe, but after a week's travel with him I begin to see that, right or wrong, he cares nothing whatsoever for politics. He truly sees my family's deaths as small matters. It makes me wonder: on exactly what scale is he accustomed to envisioning tragedy?

When I close my eyes I see the way Oriana's arm was thrown over Oren's body, as if such a slender thing could shield him.

It is cold, and my hand is shaking. My writing will soon become illegible, so if there is more to say about the fall of Highever it will have to wait.

* * *

18 Drakonis

Location: Ostagar

Weather: Chill creeping mist

Health: Good

Temper: Somber

Events: Introduction to fellow Warden recruits, Meeting with Teyrn Loghain Mac Tir of Gwaren

It seems all of Ferelden is represented here at Ostagar. Chantry, Circle of Magi, Ash Warriors, nobles' armies, and of course the Grey Wardens. The young golden-haired king himself is sunnily presiding as though he were the master of ceremonies at an ambassador's reception; it is nothing short of bizarre. Rumors abound, however, that behind the scenes he and Teyrn Loghain are involved in constant shouting matches, not only about battle strategy but something to do with Queen Anora as well.

Unfortunate reader, in case you live at some hard-to-imagine distant point of posterity: Queen Anora is Teyrn Loghain's daughter. While she is reportedly beloved of the people - I myself have never known the honor of her presence - she has not a drop of noble blood. Loghain was some sort of farmer who earned the rights to the abandoned teyrnir of Gwaren not by right of blood but by his (admittedly spectacular) military exploits during Ferelden's war for independence from Orlais. He then proceeded to marry a cabinet-maker of all things and raise her to the position of teyrna.

I can only imagine that young King Cailan, last scion of the ancient blood of Calenhad, might occasionally rebel against being saddled with the (seemingly barren) offspring of a farmer and a carpenter, but this, unfortunate reader, is pure speculation on my part and should not be entered into the annals of history.

For we are making history here, are we not? If you have suffered through volumes upon volumes of my childish whinging about unrequited affections and harsh swordmasters, you have at last found the diamond amongst the manure, a first-hand view of the events at Ostagar in the chill spring of 9:31. My impressions are as follows:

LOUD.

Maker's breath, my aching head. The Chantry's faithful intone prayers, mages chant their unnerving rituals, blight-tainted dogs howl in pain, merchants bark orders at elven servants, soldiers sing and laugh and bellow as though sheer volume will drown out their fears. A few moments do stand out from the constant din as worth recording, however. Warden Duncan was kind enough to look after Bricks, which freed me to explore the camp at my leisure while we waited for everyone to gather for the Grey Warden initiation.

For the first time, I spoke both with an elder Circle Mage and with one of the Tranquil, face to face. Separately, not together. The mage-I have already forgotten her name-could not have been less like my mother, and yet the raw wound left by Mother's recent loss drew me to the maternal aura this slim white-haired woman projected. Are mages even allowed children? Perhaps there was a matching emptiness in her, for while mages are allegedly eccentric and mysterious, she seemed quite down-to-earth and more than willing to chat with me at length about the battle, about the Fade, and about the legend of the darkspawn's origin.

She seemed ambivalent as to whether the story about the Tevinter magisters fouling the Maker's City was meant to be taken literally, or as an allegory meaning that mankind's collective sins are the source of all pain. It's easy enough to imagine, oh unfortunate one, why the nice lady might not wish to believe that it was specifically a group of mages who doomed the world.

The Tranquil gentleman I spoke to - well, the less said about him the better, perhaps. Ghastly business, really. But I'll admit that it does seem a better alternative than slaying any mage in danger of demonic possession. At least he's able to experience life in some fashion, and as he says, be "productive." I suppose productivity is what replaces happiness, when one is incapable of feeling.

I should briefly name the Grey Wardens who are to be present at my Joining, in case any of them turn out to be heroes of especial note. I would not lay odds on Daveth. He was apparently recruited to the Wardens because he got caught with Duncan's coin purse. Ser Jory of Redcliffe seems honorable enough, but not deeply committed. He's got a wife with child at home - a girl from my Highever, of all places! - so I suspect what he secretly wants is to fail his initiation and go back to her. And then there is Alistair, who has already been initiated as a true Warden but is unlikely to amount to much. He was meant to be a templar before Duncan recruited him, but to be honest, he doesn't seem to have the temperament for that, either; he alternates between irreverent and tetchy. After having met the three of them I'll admit I feel slightly less honored to be chosen. Perhaps the order is not as elite and competitive as I had believed.

The highlight of the day, of course, was my meeting with the legendary Loghain Mac Tir. I projected enough confidence to the guard outside the tent that I was hardly questioned when I asked if I could see the teyrn. And when Loghain emerged, he recognized me! Not by name, but he knew right away that he had seen me before, and when I introduced myself I could see the spark of recognition in his eyes as the name fell into place.

I attended a Landsmeet with Father exactly once, and somehow the man remembered. He's every bit as clever as they say, though I hope for King Cailan's sake that his daughter looks nothing like him. I think I initially intended to tell the teyrn the news about Highever, but something in his manner made me change my mind. He wasn't hostile or dismissive, and in fact asked me several questions when he could easily have ended the conversation, but there is something about him that makes one deeply dread the idea of seeming weak in his presence.

After my meeting with the teyrn, I visited the kennels and spoke [this line is crossed out]

I was interrupted while writing; Duncan was gathering the recruits for our initiation. There is an air of secrecy about the whole thing, so I may be the first man who has dared to write of it. I hope this will be valuable to you, unfortunate reader. I am not certain if this is typical of most Warden initiations, but our first step was to venture into the Korcari wilds to slay our first darkspawn, collecting vials of their blood and in the process hunting down some lost Grey Warden treaties at the ruins of an old tower. I have just returned from that outing, and while Duncan prepares our Joining ritual I have time to record the event for posterity.

I can say without hesitation that that outing was the most nightmarish experience I've ever had. I do not use the word to mean "particularly trying," as many hyperbolists are wont to do. I mean to say that it had an unreal quality, that the hairs on my neck stood on end the entire time, and nothing I saw or experienced made any sense.

First there were the wilds: a marshy forest sparsely littered with half-sunken, listing fragments of grand ruins, presumably Tevinter. I did not see a single work of man that had kept its perpendicular dignity; the earth had shrugged it all into surreal disarray, and even natural features seemed displaced and chaotic; exposed tree roots dangling over gullies, vines growing up or down or sideways or diagonally as the terrain permitted.

Then there were the darkspawn themselves. I have fought all manner of wild beasts, and despite all the warnings, I was expecting something not unlike a great venomous spider with two legs instead of eight. This is what we imagine when we hear the word "monster" - we pour the ugliest thing we've experienced into a slightly different mold and assume we can imagine the horror. But the mind cannot conceive of true evil until it has stared into its face. It is useless to try, and words are flimsy conveyances. I shall try, and I shall fail, as all the soldiers I eavesdropped upon at camp failed to do before me.

The darkspawn are driven and utterly hollow. They lack language; they lack even the simple moods or self-preservation of beasts, and yet they lay traps, set ambushes, draw back bowstrings and aim. Their flesh is pale; their mouths bristle with teeth and their eyes are dark holes; both mouth and eyes seep black ichor that smells of something worse than rot, worse than mold. Even a reader could glean from this simple description that they are unpleasant. But until one is in the darkspawn's presence, experiencing the whole of them, it is difficult to explain the visceral horror they evoke.

Perhaps the smell is part of it; scents have a way of reaching directly to the deepest and most unguarded parts of our consciousness. Or perhaps it is the way they move: familiar and yet just wrong enough in its mindless quickness to make the hairs rise on the neck. Deep guttural laughter sometimes emits from them with no apparent cause, a seemingly involuntary sound that resembles mirth only by chance.

One can look at them and believe the tales: that they are the consequence of human sin. They mock our forms, go through the motions of using our weapons and tactics of war, but it seems a fragile veneer over something else, some singular wretchedness, some vast mindless loathing that pulses through all of them in unison like a diseased heartbeat.

Until you stand face to face with one, you simply will not understand. I know how maddening that is to read, how strangely smug it sounds, and I apologize, unfortunate reader. But truth is, perhaps more often than not, maddening.

At any rate, we fought them, we collected some of that reeking blood into vials, and we found the old ruined tower containing what should have been a magically sealed chest with Grey Warden documents inside. Instead we found the chest broken, and there we discovered that a wilder woman had been following and watching us for quite some time.

She appeared seemingly from nowhere when we were examining the chest, and she, too, was like something from an unsettling dream. Pale, black-haired, with the golden eyes of a predator. Her bare feet were soundless; she was dressed in scraps of leather, string, and feathers.

The other recruits went half mad in fear at the sight of her, which I did not fully understand, as she was perfectly cordial, if a bit coy. She addressed me as "handsome lad," as though I were not clearly older than she (her clothing revealed enough of her form for me to confidently make that judgment). Jory and Daveth speculated on her nature aloud as though she weren't even present; Alistair was so outright hostile to her that I had to step forward and take over the conversation before they provoked her into revealing whether she was, in fact, some sort of witch.

All I had to do was treat her respectfully, and she was happy to lead us to her mother, who had apparently taken the documents from the chest in order to better protect them. Her mother was quite old and half mad, but the crone took a particular, peculiar interest in me and insisted that her daughter - Morrigan, she called her - show us the safest way back to the camp with the treaties. The moment we were within sight of civilization, Morrigan vanished as mysteriously as she'd appeared. I didn't even have the chance to properly thank her.

Now there is nothing left to do but await the Joining, whatever that may be. Perhaps I shall be the first to write of it.

* * *

19 Drakonis

I shall not write of it. Suffice it to say, I am now a Grey Warden, and I now understand the need for secrecy.


	2. Chapter 2

2 Cloudreach

Location: Lothering

Weather: Cool and fair

Health: Well-recovered

Temper: Determined

Events: Battle of Ostagar and aftermath

I kept hearing her voice, in some state between waking and dreaming. I was asleep enough to be senseless of the world around me, unable to open my eyes and rise, but awake enough to wonder: why am I dreaming of her? The girl from the wilds. I hadn't thought of her since we left the swamp, and now in my dreams I heard her, again and again.

When we'd met, I had made note of her peculiarly cultured accent - her mother's as well - but I had not fully appreciated the low, velvety slyness of her voice, its rich expressiveness. Now it washed over me like cool water, and I drank deeply.

_What are you dreaming of that makes you smile so? Perhaps it is best that you do not wake up - when you do, that smile will not be long for the world._

I was following her through the wilds. Darkspawn surrounded us, gnashing their blackened teeth, but wild Morrigan passed through them unharmed with a playfully swaying gait, leaving a safe wake in which I might follow. Her bare feet left softly glowing prints behind her in the mud.

_Come now, lazy lord. I've no wish for a pet. Stop playing dead, and open those eyes. They were green; I remember. You do no one any good, lying there, and your pretty face is fast losing its novelty._

I am no mage; I normally remember dreams only in fragments. But there was something unnatural about this sleep, and perhaps that is why on this lone occasion I traveled the Fade as mages do, keeping full memory of it upon waking.

Imagine my surprise when I came to full consciousness and found that Morrigan was not a dream at all. Her golden hawk's eyes watched me shrewdly from near the door of her mother's tiny hut in the wilds. She was patient with my questions, and explained as best she could that every Grey Warden but Alistair and myself had died at Ostagar. Teyrn Loghain had pulled his troops from the field and left the Wardens - and King Cailan - to die.

Everywhere I go lately, a massacre unfolds around me.

As soon as I had begun to get my bearings I dressed and left the hut to speak with her mother. The old woman has the same raptor eyes as Morrigan, but her hair is wild and white, and she does not give the impression of a woman young enough to have a daughter barely grown. The wilder folk call her Flemeth, she told me, which gave me a start. A fearsome witch indeed, if the superstitious locals would grace her with that particular name. I know the legend of Flemeth well - the Couslands possess Highever solely because Flemeth was said to have murdered its last lord, her husband Conobar, six centuries ago.

I specifically remember her saying that the wilders called her Flemeth, as though to suggest that it was not her name. A misdirection, I have now come to believe, as the extent of her power and wisdom (and madness) has become clearer to me. It was she who somehow rescued Alistair and myself from the top of the Tower of Ishal, a tower whose lower levels were swarming with darkspawn. It was she who healed us both, claims Morrigan. And it was she who somehow knew to protect the Grey Warden treaties all these years, treaties which are now our only hope for gathering an army to replace the one lost at Ostagar.

I suspect she may in fact be the Flemeth of legend, but I dare not speak this suspicion aloud in front of Alistair, who is more spooked by anything to do with magic than any rational man has the right to be. His hostility toward Morrigan is both excessive and troubling, given that Flemeth ordered her "daughter" (surely not) to accompany us on our new and ambitious quest.

I feel quite differently, now, about writing in this journal. Thank you again, dear Aldous, Maker grant you peace, for instilling in me the ridiculous habit of ordering my thoughts in writing. If Alistair and I - the last two Fereldan Grey Wardens-do not succeed in our task, someone ought to know that an effort was made. And if we do succeed, surely someone will want to know how it all began.

It began here in Lothering, with three people (and a dog) keeping their heads down and trying to go unnoticed as they gathered supplies and rumors. Morrigan hides because she is an apostate mage who would be captured and made Tranquil by the Circle most likely, and Alistair and I hide because for whatever reason, Teyrn Loghain either believes that the Grey Wardens betrayed King Cailan, or he is spreading that story to further his own aims.

I go over and over this in my head, and I still cannot sort it out. I remember distinctly that Teyrn Loghain badgered His Majesty not to join the Wardens on the field, but that Cailan pulled rank and refused. If Loghain's plan was to doom the Wardens all along, then the King's death was not part of his plan, only - somehow! - an acceptable collateral casualty. Why was it so important to him that the battle of Ostagar go as it did? There must be a reason.

Alistair and Morrigan have both leapt to the conclusion that he is scheming to seize the throne for no particular reason, just as Howe schemed to take Highever. But Teyrn Loghain is no Arl Howe, was not raised with a sense of entitlement. Every decision he has made in his long and distinguished career has been in service to Ferelden. It is no exaggeration to say that if not for Loghain Mac Tir, we would all be Orlesians. And yet he has never sought glory or benefit; only safety. He is a strategist and a careful thinker. What information are we missing?

One factor worth considering: while I cannot say more, Teyrn Loghain is not entirely paranoid to mistrust Grey Wardens. The secrets we keep - though not secrets of which I personally am ashamed - would destroy our shining reputation if known by the masses. It is possible that a man as observant as the teyrn sensed an aura of shameful conspiracy about us and was forced to make his own educated guesses about what we might be hiding. He could never guess the truth on his own. No one could.

At any rate, speculation gets me nowhere. Our obvious next step is to somehow survive long enough to get to Redcliffe Castle and speak with Arl Eamon. He was the King's uncle, and is apparently an old mentor of Alistair's. Between that and my own status as possibly the last surviving Cousland, Eamon will be inclined to listen to our account of what happened at the battle, and all of the Landsmeet will be inclined to listen to him. There is still hope. If we get out of Lothering alive, that is. One group of highwaymen already tried to cash in on the bounty Teyrn Loghain has placed on our heads. It did not go well for them.

As much as Alistair would hate to admit it, Morrigan's powers are tremendously useful in battle, and she seems to have them under ironclad control. It makes one wonder if the Chantry isn't stirring up hysteria about magic for no reason. Morrigan has been free her entire life to study magic in her own way, and if she is possessed by a demon, it is certainly a polite one. Until she starts speaking to Alistair, at any rate, at which point her tongue becomes a double-edged razor. Maker, but those two despise each other. Every day I am more grateful for Bricks, who is thus far the best-mannered of our little foursome.

All the same, however eccentric my new companions may be, I trust them, and given all I have been through in the past month I am deeply grateful not to be alone.

* * *

8 Cloudreach

Location: Lothering

Weather: Cloudy, tepid

Health: Good

Temper: Anxious

Events: Arrival of Sten and Leliana

We should not still be in Lothering. Everyone here knows that Alistair and I are Grey Wardens, and most of the villagers protect us, perhaps counting on us to save them from darkspawn. But "most" is not sufficient. Already yet another mob has ambushed us in hopes of handing our heads to Teyrn Loghain. Not highwaymen or soldiers this time, nothing but a pack of starved farmers and villagers desperate for the bounty. And still we had to slaughter every last one of them. Afterward I turned to Leliana, expecting that she would be a shaking wreck, but she was calmly retrieving arrows from their corpses.

Leliana. I ought to explain her. I ought to write these things in order.

At first I avoided entering the tavern or Chantry, not liking the idea of being trapped indoors with templars or drunken peasants, skirting the edges of town and trying to get what information I could from refugees. It was no use; they all recognized that there was something different about our well-armed and armored group.

While we were skulking about the periphery we found a hulking beast of a man in a cage. He spoke with us, though he revealed little other than his name. "Sten of the Beresaad, vanguard of the Qunari people."

I have read of the Qunari, but never seen one. He did not look as they were described; I saw no sign of horns. In dim light he might have been mistaken for a monstrously large human. Morrigan was strangely taken with him, and wondered if we could see him released, or if not, at least do him the honor of a swift death. Though Sten was reluctant to speak, he eventually told us that the Revered Mother at the Chantry held the key to his cage.

Under no circumstances was I going to walk into a Chantry with Morrigan tailing after me, and so I thought perhaps we might buy or badger our way into a room at the inn where she could be safe under Alistair's watch while I investigated the situation further. The moment we walked into the tavern, however, we found our second ambush - this time Teyrn Loghain's own men. They immediately surrounded us, but our odds still looked fairly good, given that Bricks and Morrigan were with us.

That was when Leliana appeared. A sweet little slip of a redheaded girl with an Orlesian accent and a Chantry robe. In dulcet tones she appealed to Loghain's men for peace; they responded much as you might expect. What I did not expect was that when they attacked, she would swipe a steak knife from a table and join the fray.

Once we had killed all of the men but the leader, and had him on his knees in surrender, Leliana pleaded with me to spare him. My veins pulsed with battle-rage on top of garden-variety rage on top of grief bubbling back to the surface. I saw in him the men who slaughtered Oriana, my father and mother; I saw Loghain as Howe; it was all the same through the blood-red haze. But somehow through it all I saw Leliana's eyes, at once tranquil and pleading, blue-gray as the sky outside. It was the most difficult act of self-mastery I have ever achieved, but I sheathed my blades and sent Teyrn Loghain's dog back to his master with a message: The Wardens know what happened at Ostagar.

Afterward Leliana insisted on joining us, claiming the Maker had sent her a vision revealing this as her destiny. Alistair, of course, was quick to judge her as mad, but I know enough to know that I know nothing of Chantry folk, or the Maker, or those who devote themselves to His service. And so I withheld judgment, especially given that she'd managed to fend off her portion of the ambush with nothing but a robe and a steak knife, and we have few enough willing allies.

Earlier we'd stashed some perfectly serviceable weapons and leather armor from the highwaymen we killed on the way in, hoping to sell them later. Enough of the leather fit Leliana to put me better at ease about her safety. She also found a bow in our stash, which seemed to delight her. Something tells me she has not spent her entire life reading scriptures - wayward Orlesian nobility, perhaps, trained as Fereldan noblity are for battle? In any case it is not difficult to see that her help is needed. It would do Alistair good to look past surfaces once in a while.

Once Leliana joined us and declared that we were doing the Maker's work, it felt safer to enter the Chantry. I befriended a few templars, and Leliana made short work of convincing the Revered Mother to hand us the key to Sten's cage. And so now we have a taciturn giant on our team as well. He could be a tremendous asset to us in battle if I could only figure out some way to outfit him. That is why we are still here. He hasn't eaten in nearly a month - if he were human he'd be dead - and he is dressed only in soiled rags. Nothing the highwaymen wore comes close to fitting him, and he needs a proper sword. There are rumors of bandits lurking in the farmers' fields; we must hunt them and see if they have anything we can use to equip our new "friend." Otherwise it isn't safe to take him from here; we may as well have offered him the mercy-killing in the cage that Morrigan suggested.

There is further bad news. One of Arl Eamon's knights was at the Chantry; apparently they are all out chasing some story about Andraste's ashes, as the arl has taken gravely ill. He may even be dead. All the same, his family is more likely to welcome us than our other potential allies. The nearest possibility, geographically speaking, would be the Dalish in the Brecilian forest, but I'd be mad to wander into their territory without further support. The dwarves are farthest; I'd virtually have to walk through Redcliffe to get to them, and the Circle is just the other side of the lake from the arl's castle. So heading to Redcliffe first still makes the most sense. But first we must either ensure that Sten can defend himself or abandon him to the mercy of the same villagers who imprisoned him.

He is a murderer, you see. Slaughtered an entire family with his bare hands, says the Revered Mother, and he does not deny it. It is difficult to read a Qunari, but there is something about his story that gives me pause. He killed an entire family and then sat there, for days, until he was arrested? I feel he must be covering for something or someone else, someone he is willing to die for. Why else would he not have run? He cannot slaughter whomever he likes and hope for armies to back him up, as Howe can. He is alone here, far from home. Nothing I have read of the Qunari tells me they are likely to throw their lives away in foreign lands for no reason. There is more to his story, and until I know what it is, his life belongs to me.

This is his punishment, but it is also my responsibility. That is the side of nobility that men like Howe forget. Those who belong to us - be they dogs, servants, vassals or stray Qunari - depend upon us to care for them as well as put them to use. It is only our care for them that gives us the right to use them. And so, by the Maker, I will find enough armor to cover this hulking beast, and put a sword in his hand, even if it means painting the fields red with bandit blood.

* * *

10 Cloudreach

Location: Camp off Imperial Highway

Weather: Fair

Health: Good

Temper: Focused

Events: Change of plan

On our way out of Lothering we happened to overhear a rumor that there has been a sudden rash of demon possessions at the Circle of Magi. My initial reaction to this rumor was, here is yet another ally we shall be unable to rely upon in our struggle, but after a brief chat with Morrigan I have reconsidered.

Morrigan has an interesting take, perhaps due to not being raised in the Andrastian faith. She holds no particular terror of demons, instead viewing them as yet another enemy to be faced and overpowered or defeated. Given that she has apparently had more direct experience with spirits and demons than anyone else in our party, I am inclined to listen to her advice. If she is correct in viewing demons as fallible like any other enemy, this means that we may be in a position to help with a rather time-sensitive problem and secure allies in the process. Our journey to Redcliffe must be put off until we've at least seen the situation at the Circle for ourselves.

The more I speak with Morrigan, the more grateful I am that her mother ordered her to accompany us. While she is shockingly (dare I say endearingly?) ignorant of the basics of human culture, trade, politics, and even socialization, she possesses a wealth of valuable knowledge if one is willing to look past her defensive and slightly self-absorbed manner. For example, by taking the time to ask questions of her background without judgment, I learned that she has the astonishing ability to take the form of animals. That is how she followed us through the wilds unseen, and how she "disappeared" afterward.

The Circles of Magi profess to know all the answers about matters arcane, and yet they appear to be under attack by demons, while this half-clad free spirit throws lightning at my enemies, overwhelms their minds with paralyzing terror, and allegedly wanders the wilds turning into wolves and cats and Maker knows what else… yet she has no fear of demons whatsoever.

I'll admit that it is difficult to imagine a demon tempting or deceiving her; I have never met a person with such a strong will. At times she applies it to ridiculous ends, such as stubbornly refusing to back down in an argument on a subject of which she knows little, but her confidence is not entirely bravado. I know that there is fear somewhere at the heart of her - fear of what, I am uncertain. But when we speak of magic and demons, the brash excess of bravado gives way to the firm certainty that can come only from expertise. It is important to recognize the difference.

I see the same sort of confidence in Sten, and I confess that it is one of the qualities I admire most in any being. Leliana has her own brand of certainty, but it is one born of blind faith, and while I do not think her as addled as Alistair does, I pity her. Her faith is a shield against something: some fear or pain she is unwilling to face head-on. I hope it will not become a problem for our little band, for we are otherwise getting along fairly well thus far.

I rely not only on my own insight to judge my companions; Bricks is a surprisingly useful way to gather data about others. Leliana coos over him as though he were a pet. Alistair invades his territory while he is eating and then appeals for pity when bitten. Sten locks gazes with him, growls, and then cedes his worthiness as an ally. Most peculiar of all is the dog's interaction with Morrigan; I have never seen him so abjectly submissive to anyone, particularly to someone who does nothing but heap him with verbal abuse. I wouldn't let anyone talk to my hound that way if he didn't so obviously adore it.

Let that be a warning to me. I impulsively bought a golden necklace from a refugee at a shockingly low price, and only realized once it was in my hands that I had been imagining what it would look like draped around that slender throat. I have made a point to be generous with my new allies to earn their loyalty - I also gave Alistair an interesting statuette I noticed him eyeing at a merchant's stand, and offered Leliana a bronze symbol of Andraste I'd found abandoned in Lothering. Both were delighted, and I was delighted in turn to see myself rise in their esteem. Gift-giving is something I have always enjoyed and had a knack for; there is nothing quite like the thrill of seeing someone look to you with wonder that you anticipated their heart's secret desires (so easily read! Why does no one else mind the signs?).

And yet, when I gave Morrigan the necklace - saw the undiluted greed in her eyes, the way her hands hesitated slightly just before taking it, the glance she darted upward, half suspicious, half wondering - an answering greed stirred in me. I stood there, expectantly, until she put the necklace on. I knew better than to order it; I knew she would resist. But it was my will, and she almost unknowingly obeyed. Such a proud, stubborn creature, and I think if I set my mind to it I could buy her with pretty trinkets as easily as one might a common whore. The thought both repulses and fascinates me. But who is controlling whom? Perhaps that little glance, that demure show of gratitude, was her way of making me feel important - because what better way to bring a man to heel than to make him think himself your master?

I shall have to be very careful with this one. I want her, that much is clear. But I shall only have her if I am certain that it is my choice, and that I have not been lured.

* * *

[_a smear of blood mars the top of the next page_]

The golem smashes the doors, the mouse slips through the cracks. What does it mean? It means something. Wynne fears failure. Be fire and fire will not burn you, be spirit and see the unseen. Leliana is helpless when the Chantry fails her. Remember. Spirit freezes fire, fire burns the golem, golems crush the spirit, and the mouse is helpless if seen. Use the Litany against Uldred.

[_an incomprehensible sketch that looks almost like a strange floor plan, with arrows between disconnected rooms. It is unfinished._]

Morrigan was the last. I did not want to leave without her. The demon resembled her mother only when it slapped her face. She was not cowed - not fooled! - but she waited for me - why?

It's fading so fast, writing doesn't hold it. What golem? What Litany?

Damn it. I just wrote about a demon and Morrigan, I remember remembering it - an echo of an echo - but I no longer remember the demon. It's slipping through my fingers like sand.

_We found each other in this place_, Wynne said defiantly to someone, and I remember being surprised that my eyes burned with tears.

And now I don't. It's gone.

The others have rested and are urging me to proceed. Wynne and Morrigan remember their parts. But the bulk of it, the parts I alone saw... they are gone. Leliana does not remember her part; did not believe me when I told her that she treated me as a stranger, cowered in fear as I fought a demon alone. Now even I do not know if I told her the truth.

I should not have stopped to write. I wanted to find some way to remember, but I have failed. Maker, don't let me fail the Circle.


	3. Chapter 3

23 Cloudreach

Location: Camp near Lake Calenhad  
Weather: Unseasonably cool  
Health: Drained and tired  
Temper: Shaken  
Events: Fall of Kinloch Hold, Wynne, journey to the Fade, a book and two kisses

If I had known the horrors that awaited me at the Circle Tower I would not have gone. Maker's breath - I have never been so frightened: I who fled my own home not quite two months ago, stumbling over corpses. I know now why magic is feared.

When Sten, Leliana and I arrived at Kinloch Hold (given the way Alistair goes half mad at the very thought of magic and demons, I elected to leave him in camp with Bricks) we were told by templar Knight-Commander Graegoir that the doors to the main tower were sealed. Demons and abominations had taken over the Circle, and Graegoir had called for the Right of Annulment. That meant that templar reinforcements were on their way, and once they arrived, they would kill everything that still moved in the tower.

The first thing I thought of was the mages who had fought at Ostagar. I was told that unlike the Grey Wardens, many of the mages had survived and returned to the Circle. That Tranquil fellow who so unnerved me, the white-haired woman with her reasonable voice, they had risked their lives to help save Ferelden from darkspawn and were now locked in the tower to die.

In what would be my last act of courage for - how long? Hours? Days? - I insisted that they lock me in with them. I said that we would protect any innocents who still lived and cleanse the place of demons. Graegoir said he would let no one out of the tower, including me, without the word of the First Enchanter - a man named Irving who had been locked in long ago. I do not know whether to thank the Maker or curse my naivete for whatever mad and misguided confidence led me to believe I could survive in there long enough to find him.

The templars, as promised, locked the door behind us as soon as we crossed the threshold.

The first hallway we traversed, the apprentices' quarters, gave a grim (but in retrospect misleadingly quiet) preview of what we would face. Fresh bodies of both templars and mages lay sprawled where they'd fallen in the hall and in the sleeping quarters, all looking to have been felled by primal elemental magic, but there was no sign of demonic activity. Nothing alive at all in fact, only scattered apprentice journals to give us hints as to what had happened. There were vague mentions in the most recent entries of a Senior Enchanter named Uldred who had been rallying apprentices to help him make sweeping changes in the Circle.

Past the doorway at the far end of the hall, I was granted my last stroke of good luck: I found the woman from Ostagar, alive. She looked weary, but unharmed, and was protecting children with an arcane barrier of her own creation that shut off access to the rest of the tower.

"It's you!" she exclaimed by way of greeting. "No. Come no further. Grey Warden or no, I will strike you down where you stand." Between Teyrn Loghain and an elderly mage both recognizing me on sight after a single meeting, I am beginning to believe I have a memorable face.

Though time was of the essence, once I had reassured her that I was not here to enact the Right of Annulment, we allowed for proper introductions. Her name is Wynne, and she is a skilled healer and a Senior Enchanter of the Ferelden Circle of Magi. She told me that one of her fellow Ostagar veterans had tried to take over the Circle upon their return. This power-mad veteran was, of course, Senior Enchanter Uldred from the apprentices' journals.

"I'm sure Uldred has some good qualities," Wynne said with dry diplomacy. "He probably has a very good reason for not displaying them."

Wynne didn't know what had become of Uldred in the chaos, but she had never liked the man, and she was certain that the current state of the tower was his fault. He had gone into a meeting with First Enchanter Irving at the apex of the tower, and once the doors to the meeting room had closed something had clearly gone horribly wrong. Screams had been heard from that part of the tower, but no one had survived attempts to investigate.

When I agreed to help Wynne try and save what uncorrupted mages remained, Morrigan pulled me aside. In a low and distractingly (deliberately?) intimate murmur, she opined that Circle mages were sheep who no longer even knew how to graze without their shepherds nearby. She was of the mind that there was no way any of them could have survived such an ordeal with their minds and souls intact. She was actually in favor of letting the templars annul the entire Circle. But I had already made up my mind to at least try to help them, and so I silenced her further objections before Wynne could overhear.

My idea was that with a highly trained healer protecting us, we could safely unseal and enter the upper levels of the tower and determine for ourselves who was corrupt and who was innocent. At this point Sten (wisely, in retrospect) offered to stay behind and help protect the children in Wynne's place. In truth I was relieved; while he is not as vocally fearful of magic as Alistair, he has made occasional dry comments that led me to believe he might not make the most sympathetic of mage-rescuers. I also thought that thanks to Wynne's assistance I would suffice as shield for Leliana and Morrigan.

Maker forgive me for my arrogance. The moment Wynne dissolved the barrier, we heard screams in the distance. We smelled fresh blood and human excrement and a sulfurous stink I now know to be the reek of demons. Even so, I stubbornly convinced myself that I, who had awakened to a massacre at Highever and fought through a darkspawn horde at Ostagar, was the perfect man to keep a level head and solve the problem.

I was wrong.

I will not catalogue the dozens upon dozens of dead, neither those dismembered on the blood-slick floors nor the shambling possessed corpses that attacked us. Nor will I tally the hunched, twisted abominations still wearing their old mage robes, something alien inside the formerly human skin, stretching and warping it all out of proportion.

We did, at least, find some answers. One of Uldred's still-human collaborators, near death, explained as best she could what had happened, and to my profound distress I learned that Teyrn Loghain's hand was behind this, if indirectly. He had spoken with Uldred and said that if Uldred could take charge of the Ferelden Circle and put its support behind Loghain for the Fereldan throne, he would reward the Circle with additional freedoms and reduced templar oversight.

Reader, this dying girl was _desperate_. I had never understood before how severely some Circle mages chafed against the restraints placed upon them, but I saw in her eyes that she preferred death to continuing to live as she had. Apparently Uldred harbored the same desperation. Sometimes, or so he had been preaching to the apprentices, extreme measures were necessary to effect change. As this young woman put it, "Andraste waged war upon the Tevinter Imperium; she didn't write them a strongly worded letter."

But Uldred had gone too far, by anyone's standards. He resorted to blood magic to give him the power he sought - the power to control men's minds. Blood magic brings demons, and demons are all too good at breaking their bindings. It was now the demons, and not Uldred, who were in charge of this tower. I realized - as I put this girl to the sword like merciful Hessarian at Andraste's pyre - that because mind-magic was at work, there was no way of telling good from evil by sight. The demons didn't even need to possess people and turn them into visible abominations in order to control them. They'd had time to magically control the minds of anyone and everyone in the tower.

Even if I'd wanted to stubbornly try for peace, I would have failed. Everyone - every thing we saw - attacked us. We were beset by shades, fiery rage demons, and even a handful of crazed templars ensorcelled by desire demons (sickening creatures that made my bile and manhood rise simultaneously, the most wretched feeling imaginable). Above all, though, my pride and my sense of self were most scarred by the sloth demon.

It overpowered us all, even Morrigan. She explains that while our bodies fell into helpless slumber on the tower floor, our spirits were separated and tormented in the Fade. Somehow, she says, my spirit was rebellious enough that I broke free of the illusion the sloth demon had created and fought my way through the demon's realm to find each of my companions. One by one, she says, I dissolved my companions' private dream worlds and brought us all together to defeat our would-be master and return to consciousness. I believe her account - why would she make up a story in which I rescued her? - but to me, everything after listening to that demon's warped, soothing voice is a forgotten dream.

I should give my hand a brief rest, here. Afterward I shall go back to before the sloth demon, because so much happened before we even got there, unfortunate reader. I apologize for the disorder of my mind. If you do not yet understand, you will by the time I reach the end of the tale.

* * *

The first thing I should mention is an encounter that is necessary to relate so that after reading Morrigan's version of events in the Fade you do not begin to think me some sort of infallible hero.

My part in _this_ encounter was to shatter a vial. I have no idea what possessed me to pick it up, nestled as it was in a hollow behind a fallen statue of Andraste. I should have had Morrigan or Wynne at least examine it before I touched it, but it appeared to be sealed, and I was so desperate for any advantage that I reached for it unthinkingly. It shattered at my touch, and a strange dark vapor escaped into the air.

Suddenly there was something else in the room with us.

A revenant, Wynne named it. It was a towering, silent, armored thing with a sword as long as a man is high. Somehow even the cavernous room we found it in seemed too small to hold its power. Its shadowed countenance filled me with naked, childlike terror. But before my trembling arms could even lift their weapons, Morrigan cast a hex at it, and this enraged it so irrevocably that the rest of the battle was pure madness.

That great, cold, heavy silent figure pursued Morrigan with a relentlessness unlike anything I have witnessed. Round and round the vast room she darted, weaving between columns and toppled podiums, benches and fallen corpses, light-footed as a hare, and it crashed after her, splintering wood and crumbling stonework. I could scarcely keep up with it; I stabbed at its armored back with both swords in a futile attempt to divert its attention.

Leliana found a position in the corner and loosed burning arrows, her expression blank and grim. Wynne did her best to heal Morrigan every time the creature's terrible sword found her. At times - and this was perhaps most horrifying of all - the women found themselves stumbling helplessly toward the creature when they meant to flee; it was a vortex one was forever in danger of tumbling intoheadfirst. We scarcely seemed to be weakening it for all our blows. Only when Morrigan managed to get far away enough to dare turning and aiming a hex at it did we see the thing make any sign of suffering. Perhaps that was why it pursued her so.

But Morrigan is only human - so far as I know - and in time her strength began to flag; her feet slowed just enough for it to catch her and cut her down with a single blow so forceful that it spun her round as she fell. I heard my own raw cry of rage. Before I could hurl myself at the beast, undoubtedly impaling myself on that terrible blade, Wynne had already surrounded Morrigan with a blinding surge of the Maker's own light, returning her to us. I am not sure which is more remarkable: the revealed extent of Wynne's healing power or the fact that no sooner had Morrigan regained her feet than she hurled another vicious spell at the creature and began the dance all over again.

I've no idea how much longer the battle lasted; we were exhausted, bleeding, dazed. Leliana crumpled to the ground and Wynne was too spent to help her. We blindly flailed whatever we could at the creature as it pursued the undaunted witch to every corner of the room. Then somehow, miraculously, like water against a rock we wore it down, and it fell. Its armor clattered to the stone floor, full of dust and lifeless bones.

Wynne dashed to Leliana's side; the young woman still lived, thank the Maker. I had not even seen the creature strike her; my eyes had been locked the entire time on Morrigan in a transport of urgent fear. Now I rushed to Morrigan, half expecting her to collapse against me, but she held me off with a hand, even though I could see the trembling in her every limb, and her face was so drained of blood I could nearly see her skull beneath it.

"That is quite close enough," she said. "If you wish to play the rescuing knight, I believe there is a swooning damsel at the other side of the room."

"Never do that again," I said to her, the battle-rage still humming through my nerves.

"Do what? Save you from a horror you unleashed? Very well, next time I shall let it devour you."

"I thought it had killed you."

"We are all standing here now, are we not? What is the point of endlessly reliving the battle?"

It was then that I saw how close she was to tears, and I turned away, half out of respect for her privacy and half because the sight unsettled me.

At the time I was puzzled at the way such a selfish creature had seemed to sacrifice herself for us, to pull the monster's attention toward her so fearlessly. Now, however, I believe I understand. It wasn't that Morrigan meant to protect us; she in fact had disregarded our presence entirely. The moment that creature appeared, she simply proceeded as though the rest of us were not in the room. She did not count on us to save her.

What shook her so terribly, I believe, was not just that she failed, and fell, but that Wynne - the "sheep" with whom she had thus far not even deigned to speak directly - had not simply left her to die.

I think she regretted the way she spoke to me afterward, to judge by her behavior when we found First Enchanter Irving's office immediately thereafter.

Wynne had half expected to find him there, but the room was abandoned. Irving's journal remained on his desk, however. In it, I saw that for years he had been colluding with Uldred to deliberately tempt apprentices toward blood magic, so that he could "reveal deviant tendencies early" and, I assume, perform the Rite of Tranquility on those who fell for his trap. This was the man whose word I was supposed to trust that all was well? If he could deceive his own apprentices in such an appalling manner, even before he was potentially exposed to mind-controlling magic, how was I to trust his word now?

In continuing to search his possessions for further clues, I found something utterly remarkable: a coal-black grimoire which Morrigan immediately recognized as Flemeth's from years past. She admitted that the reason she had accompanied me to the tower in the first place was that she knew the grimoire had fallen into the possession of the Ferelden Circle, and with the tower in disarray she had hoped to find and study it herself. I presented it to her without hesitation, and here, dear reader, she did something most peculiar.

First glancing to make certain Leliana and Wynne were not watching, she darted in to kiss me full on the mouth. It was a swift thing amidst all the horror, like the streak of a falling star across the night sky. And then she busied herself tucking the book away in her pack, as though nothing had happened.

But, as strange as it sounds, it was this one reckless, human moment, this one stubborn chaotic spark of life amid all the death and horror, that gave me the strength I needed to continue. And I would need strength, for the Fade was to follow, and then… the Harrowing chamber.

This chamber, all too well named, lies at the very apex of the tower, and so we knew even before we approached that for better or worse it was the end of our journey. Just outside its entrance we found a young golden-haired templar named Cullen, around Morrigan's age. He had been trapped in some manner of arcane prison and tortured for - I know not how long. He was out of his mind, but the one thing he said that cut through me like a sword was that it would only take one escaped blood mage to poison the mind of a king or a Grand Cleric. He wanted me to slay every mage in the nearby Harrowing chamber. Never one to take orders when I can avoid it, especially from men my junior, I told him that first I had to see what was happening for myself.

The chamber, ironically, is the site of testing for each new arrival at the Circle to see if they are strong enough to resist demonic possession. Inside was Uldred, already possessed by a demon himself, systematically bending the wills of each of the remaining mages until they, too, agreed to play host to a demon. I tried to slay him quickly enough to save the other mages, but they all turned into wretched abominations before Uldred fell, including the former First Enchanter. I cannot help but think that Irving brought this on himself, with his treachery and cruelty to those in his charge.

The young templar Cullen came in once the room had quieted. He was somewhat calmer, grateful that we had been able to stop Uldred and that there was no further risk of corruption. Weak as he still was, he led us back to the lower floor; there I found Sten, to my utter bafflement, sitting and telling a story to two children - one sitting on his knee! He immediately displaced the child and rose, looking as though I'd caught him robbing a merchant, and followed me out without another word.

Cullen went to the main doors and, from the locked side, assured Graegoir that it was safe to let us out. As it turned out, with the exception of Wynne as the only survivor, _we_ had effectively exercised the Right of Annulment ourselves. With no other mages left to aid us against the darkspawn, we instead used our Circle treaty to call upon the templars, and Graegoir agreed. Having fought a few ensorcelled templars on the upper levels, I feel confident that those who remain will be formidable allies in the fight.

To my surprise, Wynne refused Graegoir's offer of the First Enchanter position at the Circle and asked if she could accompany us, instead, to fight the darkspawn. After all she went through with us, I have to say that I was heartened by the idea of having her skills on our side. Graegoir gave her permission, and so I led the three women back to camp.

I waited until I was certain Morrigan had recovered her sense of smug self-possession, and then I went to her tent to speak with her about Flemeth's grimoire. She has not yet been able to dispel the wards on the tome, but she believes it is only a matter of time. I let her speak for a time, let her choose topics of conversation, agreed with her when she seemed to require it, challenged her when I thought it would amuse her. I waited until her words had run dry, and then I stepped close.

She backed away instinctively, and asked my intent. "Do you object?" I asked her. I could see her thinking this over, setting aside her flight instinct, engaging higher thought. I could almost see her calculations as she pondered what the benefits might be of allowing intimacy from the man who has - somehow, by default - become the leader of a force against the Blight. I saw the exact moment the scales balanced in my favor, saw her make the decision to submit to my desires the way one might decide to invest in a business enterprise.

But when I took her in my arms and decisively kissed her, the catch of her breath was not calculated, nor the trembling of her hand, nor the pounding of her heart.

She wears so little in the way of clothing that it was difficult to avoid touching bare skin; she twitched but did not pull away. There were unattended tangles in her hair. I tried to say with touch what she would have scornfully rejected if I'd said in words. _You are remarkable. You are valued. I will protect you._

When I drew away and said good night, she pulled me back, kissed me again hungrily, scratched her nails along the stubble at my jaw. Then she turned her back, went into her tent without a word. A more impatient man might have taken it as an invitation. If it was, I declined it, returning to the center of camp.

There will be time for that later, assuming we survive that long. I left it at a kiss, left her alone to think of me in her tent, and we have not spoken of it since.


	4. Chapter 4

26 Cloudreach

Location: Hinterlands camp  
Weather: Rainy  
Health: Good  
Temper: Even  
Events: The giant speaks.

Two mornings ago, as we began packing up to travel to Redcliffe on the other side of Lake Calenhad, Sten approached me. "You are not as callow as I thought," he said in lieu of greeting.

I had allowed everyone a few days' rest at our lakeside camp to recover, resupply, and to acquaint themselves with Senior Enchanter Wynne, since she will now be traveling with us. It seems Sten had been observing my interactions with the others, or perhaps he had simply had enough time to process our previous conversation, which took place just after the ordeal at Kinloch Hold.

I'd approached him because seeing him with the children there had puzzled me. Here was a man (is that the right term?) who had apparently killed an entire family with his bare hands, but who had also treated strange human children with enough kindness to earn their trust despite his size, his coarse white braids and grayish pallor, his strange red-rimmed violet eyes. I'd had no luck thus far getting him to speak of the crimes that led to his imprisonment in Lothering, and so I tried another line of questioning this time, asking him why he had come to Ferelden in the first place.

He told me that he came here to answer a question. His _arishok_ had asked, "What is the Blight?" I asked him to define _arishok_, and Sten answered that the _arishok_ commands the _antaam_, the "body of the qunari." Context suggests that the _antaam_ are the qunari armed forces, that Sten is a soldier by profession. I asked when he planned to report back to his _arishok_. He replied that he would not - that he could never go home.

Sten is not an easy man to read, but the pain in that last statement was unmistakable. I had no idea how to comfort him, and so I simply told him that he could stay with us.

"Thank you," he said. Words I had never heard from him, in a tone I had never heard either. For the time being, that was all.

Senior Enchanter Wynne was understandably exhausted after the ordeal at the Circle, and to be honest, the rest period I ordered was largely on her account. Leliana, on the other hand, surprised me by bouncing back almost immediately; by the day after the massacre she was singing to herself and telling stories to the others. I asked her about her archery skills, and she explained that before becoming affirmed as a lay sister in the Chantry here, she had been a traveling minstrel in Orlais.

It stands to reason that one who spends a lot of time on the road must learn some means of defending oneself, but there was something odd in her answer. She was so blatantly, almost playfully evasive that I don't believe she was even trying to conceal that there was more to the story. I think it was her way of telling me that she knows I am prying, but that she isn't in the mood for serious disclosures at present. Very well. She's earned her place, regardless.

Alistair is the one I'm honestly not certain how to integrate into the group, despite his being the only other Grey Warden. He seems so adrift and rudderless without the structure of the Wardens, without Duncan to lead him. He doesn't want to lead, but he outranks me in the Wardens and so I suppose he can't really seem to look to me as a leader either. He's friendly enough, in his bumbling way, but we haven't exactly become close. We've talked mostly of the Grey Wardens – what they were like as a group, and if the order might ever be rebuilt in Ferelden.

But then Sten, despite the wary manner in which I've tended to deal with him, put me off-balance two mornings ago with "not as callow as I thought." He went on to say he found me puzzling, and I said I returned the feeling. He argued that he was quite simple, and I told him I disagreed. Then I asked again why he had ended up in that cage in Lothering. This time, he told me.

He came here with seven others of what he calls the _Beresaad_, his brothers in arms. They were all cut down by a horde of darkspawn not far from the Circle Tower. I compared this aloud to my experience at Ostagar. Like me, he somehow survived, but awoke to worse luck, alone among strangers, and without his sword. He asked his rescuers what had become of the weapon, and when they claimed they had found him unarmed, he panicked and slew everyone in sight with his bare hands.

Explanation was necessary, here. Apparently for a soldier of the qunari, one's sword is one's soul. Their weapons are not interchangeable; if he tried to return without his he would be slain on sight as a soulless deserter. I suppose I could have tried to argue with such a barbaric superstition, but why debate abstract matters when there may be a practical solution? He had lost the sword a day's walk from where we were currently camped, and so despite his assertions that it would be futile, I insisted he and I take a trip out there while the others finished packing up the camp.

He was right in assuming the sword would no longer be there, but we did find a witness to the looting of the place. We were told a man named Faryn had picked the place clean and then said he was heading to Orzammar. We are bound there ourselves eventually, so I told Sten I would inquire further once we reached the dwarven city. He said nothing. His face was like stone.

When we returned to camp, he turned to me and demanded to know how I expected to stop the Blight. I was beginning to half expect strange non sequiturs from him, and so I simply answered him: the Blight ends when we slay the archdemon. He told me he had heard stories of the Grey Wardens' skill and strategy, but so far he was not impressed. Reaching the end of my patience, I told him I wasn't here to impress him.

"It only remains," he replied, "to see what you are here for."

I confess that my long-term strategy is hazy at best. For now, I continue gathering allies. Arl Eamon is next, if his health permits. If not, Maker help us, for rumors abound that some of the banns are already mustering against Loghain's claim as regent. Unless someone with Arl Eamon's clout can decisively end this madness, Ferelden, already threatened by a Blight, may be on its way to civil war as well. 

* * *

29 Cloudreach

Location: Eastern Shore of Lake Calenhad  
Weather: Warm  
Health: Exhausted  
Temper: Livid  
Events: My reputation precedes me.

Maker's hairy balls! As if darkspawn and abominations and a brewing civil war weren't enough!

A peasant woman accosted us on a narrow, crag-choked section of the road to Redcliffe. She seemed in a panic, saying her wagon had been attacked, and then she ran the way she'd come. I glanced behind us down the road. On a hunch I'd split us into two groups, a Warden in each. Alistair, Morrigan, and Bricks were still too far behind us to be seen, so my hope was that we would not need their assistance.

We followed the distressed woman, and as soon as we rounded the corner into an open area I saw him: a blond elf with elegant features and a tattoo of two serpentine vertical lines just before the left ear. Clearly not a servant, for he wore leather armor and had wicked curved blades at his hips. Even before he gave the signal, I knew.

It was too late. A huge tree crashed into the path behind us, cutting off our escape and our potential reinforcements. More men and women appeared from hiding spots on the high ground surrounding the wagon. Arrows fell on us like rain, and the ground was littered with traps, limiting our ability to run. Thank the Maker for Wynne's healing, and for Leliana, who spotted and disabled the traps while Sten and I kept the attackers occupied. Without those two women we'd have been dead eight times over. We ended up slaughtering nearly twenty highly trained assailants, the "terrified peasant" first (she turned out to be an apostate).

I was careful only to disable, not kill, the tattooed elf who gave the signal. This was clearly a formal assassination attempt, and if anyone would have answers about its origin, it would be he. Still half mad with battle rage, I was prepared to resort to torture, but to my surprise the elf made that unnecessary.

Zevran Arainai is his name, and he hails from Antiva - one of the Crows. Leliana explained the assassin guild to me in great detail, and while I suppose any minstrel worth her salt would know such dramatic tales, something the way she spoke of the Crows raised my suspicions once again about her own history. At any rate, the Crows are apparently the best and priciest assassins in Thedas, and they are generally only called in when the job has no room for failure.

How embarrassing this turn of events must be for them.

Zevran was oddly lighthearted about the whole affair; he wasted no time in telling us, quite colorfully and with genuinely dazzling comic flourishes, that Teyrn Loghain had contracted him in Denerim to kill the surviving Grey Wardens.

Do you see now, unfortunate reader, that my instinct to keep myself separated from Alistair was justified? If the Crows had succeeded, there would still at least be one Grey Warden left in Ferelden. This also removes all ambiguity about Loghain's intent at Ostagar: he meant for all the Wardens to die. But why?

Something about this doesn't add up, but at the moment I truly don't give a damn. If someone put Teyrn Loghain in front of me just now I believe I'd pulverize his skull into a fine crimson mist before bothering with something so tedious as questions.

I'd settle for finding whoever told these assassins that we were headed to Redcliffe and gave them time to find the perfect ambush spot and lay their preparations. This is the one thing Zevran refused to tell me. He said he did not trust me to be as merciful with his informant as I had been with him. He claimed it was someone blameless, but I found this impossible to contemplate.

Leliana said that this is where the Crows excel most: inducing small and unsuspecting people to betray a target's plans, habits, or current location without even knowing they are doing so. Her reassurances made me suspect her for a mad moment. I know she hasn't told me the whole truth about herself. In addition, her appearance immediately after we'd been identified as Grey Wardens in Lothering was most fortuitous. She seemed all too eager to deflect me from questioning the nature of Zevran's source… but this is madness. I can't live every moment waiting for my back to be impaled by a friend's knife.

In truth, one of the very assassins I just slaughtered could well have been drinking near us at the Spoiled Princess tavern by the Calenhad docks, evaluating my strengths and reporting overheard scraps about our plans. I wasn't cautious enough about what I said to my companions and when. I didn't pay enough attention to commoner gossip to note any new arrivals in the area. A mistake I shall not repeat.

Zevran Arainai thought I should be flattered that he considered a twenty-man ambush necessary, but I can feel nothing, not even weariness, around my white-hot rage. Normally it takes no more than hour after a battle for my vision to clear, but even now it is as though the battle rages still, and I am helpless in its thrall.

This is why I know that now is not the time to change course or decide our next move. I must continue to Redcliffe, carry out the plan I made before I lost all reason. But we are delayed. We all required a night's sleep after that battle-in shifts no less, because someone must be awake at all times to keep an eye on Zevran.

Yes, we brought him with us. No, that is not as insane as it sounds. Zevran's first attempt to kill me failed; even if he succeeded at a later date, he has so marred the Crows' sterling reputation that his life is forfeit regardless. He knows he is safer in our company, and we know that we need as many skilled allies as we can find. He and I also know that the Crows will be hunting both of us, and only Zevran has the experience to adequately spot signs of their presence or interference. For the time being, we need one another.

I am not foolish enough, however, to think that he is trustworthy. I do believe he could be made loyal, however, now that I know a bit of his background (he continues to be oddly forthcoming, assuming anything he says is true). The Crows bought him as a child, and while he enjoys his work, he was never given a choice. If Zevran is handled carefully and treated with respect, I believe the sense of self-preservation that causes him to remain with us could be converted into true loyalty. I have my eye on him; and I would be a fool not to realize that he also has his eye on me. He is nothing if not a survivor, and he does not yet know precisely what manner of man he has fallen in with. I aim to show him, and to give him something new to serve.

* * *

2 Bloomingtide

Location: Redcliffe Village  
Weather: Fair  
Health: Good  
Temper: Irritable  
Events: Alistair's identity revealed, Redcliffe under attack

I suppose I should have predicted that Arl Eamon's illness would be the least of Redcliffe's problems. As soon as we arrived within sight of the town a runner intercepted us and brought us to Bann Teagan of Rainesfere, Arl Eamon's brother, in the local Chantry. Bann Teagan informed us that Redcliffe Castle, the arl's home, has fallen silent, and that each night, a growing army of animated corpses emerges from behind its gates to attack the village.

If my hopes for aid had begun to sink when I heard that Arl Eamon was ill, they have now plummeted. It seems unlikely that anyone in the castle is alive. Similar odds hadn't stopped me from entering Kinloch Hold, however, and if I hadn't done that, Wynne and that young templar Cullen and a handful of children would be dead as well. If we save even one life in Redcliffe, it will be better than doing nothing.

If we can manage to repel the next nocturnal assault, I shall take a few of my companions in the morning and investigate the castle myself. For now, though, our energies must be directed toward protecting the village. With the help of Redcliffe's mayor in directing me to potential resources, I've found lamp oil so that we might burn the creatures when they arrive, threatened a stubborn dwarven mercenary named Gwyn and his companions into lending their skills to the fight, convinced a Chantry mother to distribute trinkets to Eamon's knights so they can feel themselves blessed by the Maker, and persuaded a miserable drunken smith to make necessary repairs to damaged armor and weapons before nightfall.

Truth be told, taking charge of the situation felt natural. I would not have thought, after that disaster at Kinloch Hold, that I would ever again feel a sense of confidence, but somehow as I comforted frightened children and bullied amoral mercenaries I once again felt myself \- not a junior Grey Warden, not a teyrn's spare son - but simply Aedan, as though this peculiar and unprecedented role I have come to play in fighting the Blight waited all along for me to fill it.

As it happens, there may be more than ill luck at work in this turn of events. My would-be-assassin-turned-ally Zevran, who accompanied me to the local tavern, spotted with his watchful eyes a suspicious-looking elf sitting alone - clearly not a local. I was able to browbeat the stranger into handing over proof of why he was loitering here: a letter of instruction, regrettably unsigned.

_Berwick,_

_We need your eyes and ears in Redcliffe. Stay in the village, keep your head down, and watch the castle. Report any changes, and you'll be well paid._

The man who was to pay him? According to Berwick, it was a man in the employ of Arl Howe. This all happened _before_ Arl Eamon became ill.

"Arl Howe is Teyrn Loghain's right hand," Berwick insisted. "So I'm not doing anything wrong!"

Teyrn Loghain's right hand. Did his left hand know what his right hand did in Highever? The answer to that question will determine whether Loghain dies by mine.

Howe's elven lackey is now trapped here like everyone else. The last word he was able to send was a report of the arl's illness; now he is afraid that if he leaves, he'll be slain by the monsters when night falls. I demanded that he fight alongside the militia tonight, if he didn't want to die by my blades there and then. Under the circumstances, he found his courage.

Meanwhile, Alistair is an even more evasive bastard than I realized, and I speak literally. Apparently, the presence of Bann Teagan painted my fellow Grey Warden into a corner, and he was forced to reveal to me (before Teagan did) that he is quite conceivably the heir to the Fereldan throne. Maker's breath, it's like something from a copper novel.

I don't disbelieve him; his resemblance to the late King Cailan is undeniable now that I look at him, and Maric would not have been the first king to dally with a servant girl. It does explain a great deal about the way Alistair has been protected his entire life. He certainly isn't a talented enough warrior or compelling enough personality to be worth all the trouble that Chantry, Grey Wardens, Arl Eamon and others seem to have gone to on his behalf. Suddenly his puzzling history begins to make something resembling sense.

I haven't time right now to thoroughly work out what this means about the line of succession, but I do think it best to sideline him as much as possible in the fighting from here on out. If nothing else, he may be an important point of negotiation at some later date. Morrigan was baffled when she heard; she wanted to know why Alistair hadn't lorded his royal blood over us from the very beginning. It is what she would have done, after all.

While Morrigan remains an incredibly useful battle companion and advisor, I'm a bit irked at her, if we are being honest, and not only because she disapproves of my efforts to save Redcliffe village. She has begun to anger me on a more personal level. I did not expect her to declare undying love for me after a single kiss, but the brazen way in which she has today been flirting with Sten of all people - within my earshot! - is an assault on my pride that I do not suffer gracefully.

Speaking of assaults, I am losing the light even as I write, which means the undead will soon be upon us. I would ask that the Maker have mercy on our souls, but the longer I live in this world the more I come to believe what the Chantry tells us: that the Maker abandoned us long ago, and we are on our own. 

* * *

3 Bloomingtide

Location: Redcliffe Village  
Weather: Fair  
Health: Weary  
Temper: Foul  
Events: Attack on Redcliffe Village, Visit from Arlessa Isolde

Redcliffe Village is a bloody mess, both literally and figuratively. We survived the night, but half the militia died, and the mayor. I thought there would be no end to the undead, but in the end we destroyed them all, and many of us lived to tell the tale.

I ended up on reasonably good terms with Dwyn, the dwarven mercenary I bullied into helping. He performed admirably in the fight, and afterward, as I helped him put his house back in order late into the night (including the door I'd kicked in), he gave me advice on dealing with Orzammar merchants. I asked if he'd ever dealt with anyone named Faryn there, and he hadn't, but Sten overheard my asking. Irritably Sten told me his sword would be long sold by now and to let the matter drop, but he has been hovering in my periphery like some bizarre cross between a bodyguard and a motherless duckling ever since.

The elf Berwick, too, was a capable archer, as it turned out. I let him live. Of Arl Eamon's knights who were not already scattered far and wide looking for the Sacred Ashes, most survived; it was the militia, the regular folk who took up arms to defend their homes, who were cut down like wheat. Even one more attack will finish this village. We must find the source of this onslaught, and we must find it today.

Whatever is going on inside the castle, Arlessa Isolde knows more than she is telling. She emerged in the morning at the mill just long enough to tell us that something evil has killed everyone in the castle but her family. She, the arl, and their son Connor are being kept alive for unknown reasons. She worries that Connor is going mad from all the death he has witnessed, and she demanded that Bann Teagan return to the castle with her alone to help him.

It is a trap; it must be. Even Teagan agreed with me, but he would not be dissuaded. He thought he could serve as a distraction for whatever this "evil" is the arlessa mentioned - some sort of demon, surely - while we sneak into the castle through a passage in the mill.

I need to think carefully about who if anyone to bring with me through the passage. This seems even more of a suicide mission than the Circle, as none among us has the first idea what to expect or how the castle is laid out. Alistair, clearly, cannot be risked. And if I fall here, he will need Morrigan, whether he admits it or not, to help him stop the Blight as the last Fereldan Grey Warden. Strange, though, how leaving her behind has begun to feel like venturing into danger unarmed.

Leliana is the only one of us who knows how to deal with locks, so I must bring her, as we are trespassing. Wynne's healing skills could be invaluable as well. Will three be enough? Maker take me, I am so tired.

* * *

I told Morrigan she was not to come with me, and she struck me across the face. It was too sudden to deflect; I'd been expecting a lecture, not a blow.

"I knew it," she spat.

"Do that again," I said, "and Maker help me, I will strike you back."

"I should never have let you touch me," she said. "I humor your desires once, and suddenly I am your precious pet to be protected? More the fool I, for daring hope one man did his thinking above the waist."

I told her she should save her tantrums for her mother. "I leave you here," I said, "because you have made it clear that you think saving these people is a foolhardy side errand. If that foolish errand should claim my life, I do not trust Alistair to end the Blight by himself."

"If that foolish errand should claim your life," she said, "I will spit on your corpse."

I tried to take her hand; it was icy with fear when she snatched it away. I do not know how to reassure her without forcing her to admit that she is afraid, and so I have left her to her misery. I shall deal with her later, or not, as the case may be. Let her cry her wretched self to sleep if this ends up being our last conversation. I haven't the energy just now to coddle her peculiarities.

I think I shall bring Sten with me to the castle. I could use someone honest at my back just now.

* * *

Maker's bootheel, sometimes I wish I'd died at Ostagar.

Arl Eamon's son is possessed by a demon. It is the boy who has been laying waste to his own home, to the town. For sport.

We learned what had happened with the help of a blood mage, Jowan, who was languishing in the castle dungeon after being ordered by Teyrn Fucking Loghain to poison the arl. Loghain told Jowan that Arl Eamon was a threat to Ferelden. Does this sound like a tangled knotted mess to you? That's because it is. It bloody well fucking is.

The boy, Connor, had begun to show magical talent, and the arlessa feared that if Eamon knew, he would send the boy to the Circle and she would never see him again. So the stupid selfish woman looked for an apostate to tutor him. She was so careless in her inquiries that somehow Teyrn Loghain found out and sent his agent Jowan to serve as tutor - and to remove "threat to Ferelden" Arl Eamon in the process.

Just how long has the teyrn been hatching plans to eliminate half the powerful people in Ferelden? Was my family part of this plot? The timing suggests that it must be connected. Whatever Loghain is scheming, whether he is right about Arl Eamon or not, his timing could not be worse. Has anyone but me and a handful of friends noticed that there is a damned Blight on?

What I wouldn't give for an audience with Loghain now - an audience with the man who looked me in the eye at Ostagar, spoke respectfully to me, possibly knowing that my entire family had just been slaughtered to serve his greater plans to "save" Ferelden. From what? Does he see something I cannot, or has he gone entirely mad?

By the time I found Jowan he'd been tortured by the arlessa's men for days. Between that and his obviously sincere determination to find some way to help with the demon, I released him. I'd left my other demon expert behind, you see.

And what deal did the demon make with Connor? Why did the boy let the creature possess him? Because it promised to save his father's life. And it did, in a manner of speaking. Jowan's poison should have killed Eamon long ago, but the demon did something to arrest his body's processes so that he is trapped eternally in slumber, neither dying nor recovering. This is how a demon keeps its promises.

My head hurts, and I feel ill.

Once we found the boy and learned of his deal with the demon, Jowan announced that the only way to stop this evil was either to kill the boy, or for Jowan to do a blood magic ritual, bleeding someone dry in order to send another mage into the Fade to confront and (possibly) sever Connor's connection to the demon from that side.

Of _course_ Jowan is a blood mage. He might have mentioned that before I let him out of his cell. Now that he has dangled the power of blood magic in front of everyone, Arlessa Isolde is demanding that she be allowed to sacrifice herself for her son. She wasn't there at Kinloch Hold. She doesn't know what blood magic can do, the horrors it can unleash.

I understand that she wants to save Connor, but if she wanted that, if she cared more about her son's needs than her own, she would have allowed him to be trained properly at the Circle. He'd still be there, with the children Wynne and Sten protected, traumatized but alive. But because she wanted to keep his power secret, even from his own father, the boy is now possessed by a demon. He is already gone.

Of course she can't see that; she's his mother. My mother could never see the evil in me, either.

_Blessed are they who stand before  
__The corrupt and the wicked and do not falter.  
__Blessed are the peacekeepers, the champions of the just.  
__Blessed are the righteous, the lights in the shadow.  
__In their blood the Maker's will is written._

I'm sorry, Isolde, but the son you tried so selfishly to keep close to you has gone so far that only more evil can bring him back. I will not murder you at the urging of the same blood mage who poisoned your husband.

The boy is already gone. I have to keep telling myself that. He is already gone.


	5. Chapter 5

12 Bloomingtide

Location: Redcliffe Village  
Weather: Warm, overcast  
Health: Rested  
Temper: Melancholic  
Events: Death of Connor Guerrin

The people of Redcliffe are gathered at the lake shore, watching the boats burn. One by one the dead are laid to rest in rowboats, sometimes alone, sometimes in family groups, children nestled between their parents. There are so many; this could go on for hours. The best surviving archers light their arrows and loose them as the boats drift away onto the great lake.

I watched for a while, respectfully, but no one was expected to witness the whole of the ritual; even the archers worked in shifts. And I needed to be alone. I walked up the hill, toward our camp, followed by ghosts.

Before I killed him, Connor Guerrin was lucid, briefly. I think the demon gave him control for a moment deliberately, in an attempt to weaken my resolve. The boy was ten years old, with a regal nose, auburn hair parted in the middle like Oren's but lighter, and shadows under his eyes.

He was disoriented. I did not mince words; I told him that the demon he'd bargained with had possessed him and used him to kill most of the people in the castle and the village. I told him what had to be done. I think I wanted him to fight me, or to cry, or to make himself a nuisance - to be the spoiled noble brat I expected his doting mother had made of him. But he didn't do any of those things. He just looked tired, and asked me two questions.

First, he asked what would happen to him after he died. I told him he would go to the Maker's side. He said he was afraid that the Maker would be angry with him for what he did. I told him the Maker would see and admire how bravely he was accepting the consequences. I told him that he was braver than some adults I had recently spoken to. I did not mention that I was speaking of his mother.

Then he asked me if it would hurt. I told him I would end it quickly.

But then the demon took him over again. And fought. It wasn't quick, not at all; the abomination was too powerful. It took four of us to take it down. But we did.

Arlessa Isolde came in and saw, after the fight was over. Saw what looked like a helpless child, limp and bloody in my arms.

I wonder if Oren died first, at Highever. If Oriana screamed like that when she saw his body.

Afterward, still numb, I asked Bann Teagan leave to go through the correspondence in the arl's study for anything that might help us untangle what had happened between him and Loghain. He allowed it, but I found nothing to explain why Loghain considered Eamon a danger to Ferelden, or any evidence of a growing rift between them.

I did find a strange locket, though. It had the flame of Andraste engraved upon it, and it had been shattered, but mended. I reasoned that it must have been Arlessa Isolde's. My first thought was that perhaps Connor had broken it, and that Eamon had carefully glued it back together. A child's carelessness, so easily mended.

Reader, I don't know how to explain it, but I suddenly felt, physically, as though there were a sword in my chest. For a moment I could not draw breath. I shut the door to the arl's study and sat at his desk with my head in my hands for at least a third of an hour.

Some things can't be mended. People must understand that. To try to go back, to think of what might have been, is madness.

No sooner had I returned to camp than Alistair confronted me. Wynne had told him what had happened, and he was furious. He, a templar, thought I should have sacrificed an innocent woman with blood magic to save the boy. I don't think Alistair even knew Connor. It was Arlessa Isolde who had forced Eamon to send Alistair to the templars when he was young, and I think that Alistair simply would have liked to see her dead. I did not voice this thought; I only told Alistair that I had done the best I could with the choices I was given.

I don't think I said it harshly, but something must have struck him, because for the first time he seemed to see me, and I watched him master himself, master his anger. It's the first time I've ever seen him look beyond his own emotions. I stayed and talked with him for a while, but we spoke of other things. The Grey Wardens, what changes after the Joining, and whether there was a possibility of contacting members of the order in Orlais or the Free Marches. There isn't. It would take weeks just to travel to the nearest Orlesian city, and even if we found any Grey Wardens to bring back with us, there is no guarantee Loghain wouldn't find a way to have them all slaughtered the moment they crossed the border.

I think this must be about Orlais, in fact. It's the only common thread. Eamon married an Orlesian; King Cailan was on good terms with Empress Celene. The Grey Wardens are an international order. Does Teyrn Loghain think Orlais is preparing for another invasion? These are the thoughts I should be dwelling on. Strategy, and politics, and how to win allies when everywhere I go, death follows like the Blight itself.

I took the locket from Eamon's study. Carried it with me. I don't know why.

Histories never speak of the feelings of generals and kings. They speak of how they were loved or hated by those they led, feared or disdained, and how that affected the outcome of a battle or nation. So long as I am the object of loyalty, love, fear, or all three, what happens in my heart - or fails to happen when it should - is irrelevant to the greater course of history.

* * *

14 Justinian

Location: Camp south of Lake Calenhad  
Weather: Hot, humid  
Health: Adequate  
Temper: Even  
Events: A detour and an intimate tryst

Morrigan has been strangely subdued the last few weeks, as we made our way carefully along the west shore of Lake Calenhad toward Sulcher's Pass en route to Orzammar. She did not seem sullen; quite the opposite in fact. There was something almost placating in her manner. She took her turn cooking, quietly readied herself whenever it was time to move camp, and said nothing when I chose others to accompany me on minor scouting missions. I began to wonder if this was not her version of an apology for her behavior in Redcliffe.

Spending less time managing Morrigan has given me more time to speak with the others. Zevran has told me tales of Antiva's fine leathercrafters and dark-haired beauties; Wynne has told me of her deprived childhood and her love for the security and grandeur of the Circle; Sten has confessed to a sort of homesickness, an out-of-place feeling surrounded by those who do not speak his native tongue. I had let Morrigan slip to the back of my mind. Perhaps she noticed, and that is why she addressed me coyly as I passed one evening, telling me how cold it was all alone in her tent.

When I turned my steps toward her, my intent was to rebuke her for toying with me. But somehow, between my reluctance to set off her temper again and my appreciation for the way the firelight caressed the bare curve of her waist, I ended up letting her lead me into the tent instead.

I know how to treat a woman gently, to show enough respect in the act of lovemaking that I am not ill-spoken of afterward. Growing up, I had a certain reputation to uphold at home, and a woman will only stroke her own ego via malicious gossip if her ego is not stroked well enough in bed. Furthermore, if you do not have enough respect for a woman to be sincerely thrilled that she would take such a risk for you, then you have no business bedding the woman in the first place. As much as Morrigan has frequently irked me, there can be no doubt of my profound admiration for her. There can be no doubt that I counted myself exquisitely fortunate.

And so I have no explanation for what happened when we were tangled together, bare and hungry, on the furs she uses as a bed. I do not know if it was her that made me lose my senses - the lithe, musky softness of her, the low murmurs in my ear, the sudden bruising pain of my bitten shoulder - or if it was something that has changed in me since the Joining: something akin to the voracious way I devour my meals since Ostagar, every bite feeling like the first in days. I devoured her body in the same way, in a haze not unlike my battle-rage, and when I should have been spent I simply… kept going, kept the same desperate animal rhythm, in a way that should not have been physically possible.

She was surprised but not at all displeased, despite the fact that by the end, when I exhausted myself for a third and final time with no break between, she might just as well have been a two-copper whore, or a sheep, or a ragged old towel for all I cared about anything but the use of her. I blacked out briefly, then found my senses again. We spoke, a little, her fingertips roaming my scalp beneath my hair. I felt strangely tender toward her, though I knew better than to say so. She had nothing but praise for my performance and said I was welcome to come to her again, or not, as we both wished, and that it need mean nothing more than that.

Maker, I am not certain I could survive a second night.

As to why we are now heading south, rather than continuing north through Sulcher's Pass, we ran into a vulnerable lone merchant who gave us what he claims is a golem control rod. Golems, unfortunate reader, are a legendary and now exceedingly rare dwarven invention - constructs of stone that fight with the ferocity and skill of men, but without independent will. This merchant had the rod, but the golem itself has been abandoned in a southern village called Honnleath, now overrun by darkspawn. He of course had no intention of venturing there.

That meant the merchant had no use whatsoever for the rod, but bandits kept mistaking it for something valuable, to his detriment, so at this point he was willing to give it away at no charge. I conferred with my companions, and all of them agreed that his story, strange as it was, showed no signs of being a fabrication. In fact, Leliana had heard tales of a mage from that very region that had once had a golem at his command during the war for independence from Orlais.

Given how useful a mindless stone soldier - immune to disease and Blight - might be in a fight against darkspawn, and given the fact that Wynne and Zevran could use some practice fighting darkspawn while there is still no sign of an Archdemon to organize them, we thought it worth a detour. We will investigate the situation, for better or worse, and then retrace our path to Orzammar.

* * *

20 Justinian

Location: Sulcher's Pass (again)  
Weather: Sultry  
Health: Unpredictable  
Temper: Bleak  
Events: Another abomination, awakening of Shale

First, unfortunate reader, let me address my state of mind, so that you might subtract it from my account of the facts and better find whatever truth lies in this entry.

I am angry at the Maker. He is no better than Arl Howe, if He doesn't understand the implied contract of nobility: that we are to care for the things that belong to us. He finds His first children the spirits too dull, and so He abandons them to create a new world and "better" children, putting the Veil between us. When His lonely firstborn manage to seduce his second born into worshiping them by actually - heavens forfend - speaking to them directly, does the Maker admit His mistake and try to care better for both halves of His wounded creation? No, He abandons the lot of it. Doesn't even bother destroying it; just walks away and leaves the mess He created to play out toward its slow and agonizing dissolution. If not for the intervention of Andraste, this whole world would have by now died a slow death. And lately, I begin to think that all She did was slow it further.

There was another abomination in Honnleath. Another child. A little girl this time, with yellow braids, who wandered too far into that damned mage Wilhelm's basement lair, where he'd kept a desire demon captive and experimented on it. I went into the basement looking for information on how to wake the golem, which was inert at the center of the village.

The demon was still there, more than twenty years after Wilhelm's death. The mage's journal was there, too; the Circle knew of his experiments and allowed them to continue. The demon appears to have influenced the golem, causing it to crush every bone in Wilhelm's body just before it deactivated. I believe the demon thought that the mage's death would free it. But the wards held. The demon sat alone in that basement for decades, until a little girl found it while fleeing darkspawn.

Of course it had to be me who slew her. Of course it is always me who ends up cleaning the mess that mages leave behind, because no one else is watching out for any of us. I have nothing but love for Andraste even still, but her "husband" is a feckless infant who, in a just existence, would not have had the power to shape a handful of wet sand, let alone two entire worlds. Andraste would not be the first woman to marry a dim-witted brute for fear of what might happen if she spurned his attentions. I have nothing but sympathy for Her.

At any rate, we have a golem now. I say we "have" a golem in the same sense that we "have" an elven assassin, because the control rod appears to be broken. The rod woke the thing, but it no longer controls it. To my surprise though, the golem seems as intelligent and reasonable as anyone else in our party, perhaps more so than Alistair. A bit sarcastic, perhaps, and with a murderous hatred of all things avian after too long suffering the indignities of their perching, but otherwise rather like a person in all ways aside from, er, physical composition. It calls itself Shale, and is, luckily for us, very interested in slaying darkspawn and, like Zevran, has absolutely nowhere else to go and no other company to keep. And so here we all are.

Zevran, as I suspected, has taken to me very swiftly. I sat with him for a long while last night when I needed distraction, letting him tell me stories of his adventures in the glittering gem that is Antiva City, including a conspiracy to kill a prince and the humorously accidental assassination of a dangerous mage just after she had seduced him into abandoning the job. I don't think the elf is used to being listened to; in fact, I'm actually slightly concerned that he may fancy me. He does call me "handsome" a great deal, and dwell in loving detail on how heroically I spared his life. Perhaps it's more of his typical extravagant flair, but given his sad and loveless history, he does seem the sort whose untapped heart might overflow at the slightest kindness.

I'm not offended on principle, though I've never had that sort of relationship with a man. But I think Morrigan is more than enough to keep my life complicated. I've been trying to walk a fine line between being warm enough to encourage Zevran's friendship without leading him down a path that might end in heartbreak - or, more to the point - end in a sudden desire for revenge which I've no doubt he could see through brilliantly. I am generally good at these sorts of balancing acts, though, so let us see how it plays out.

Next we are headed to Orzammar. I would say that I hope our business there will be relatively simple, but Bodahn, the dwarven merchant who has taken to sharing our camp on occasion and traveling in our shadow, says that rumor has it the king there is dead. Of course he is. I imagine we'll get there and discover that he was murdered by Teyrn Loghain on suspicion of Orlesian conspiracy. If I'm right, I can at least be smug in my skills at prognostication. And if it's something else entirely, honestly I'll be relieved for a bit of variety in the catastrophes I'm called upon to stop.

I'll tell you one reason I'm pleased to be heading to Orzammar: dwarves have no connection to the Fade whatsoever. That means no mages. That means no demon-possessions.

I'm sure I'll find some reason to murder a child, though, if I stay in the city long enough. Do keep turning these pages, unfortunate reader, and find out.

* * *

8 Solace

Location: Orzammar  
Weather: Clear and sunny on the surface, I presume  
Health: Good  
Temper: Even  
Events: A recovered soul, dwarven politics

As reported, the dwarven king Endrin Aeducan has recently died, and when we arrived at the surface gates after a tiring journey up into the Frostbacks, the guards informed us that no one would be allowed into the city until a successor was chosen. Before returning to camp to inform my allies of our unfortunate timing, I searched among the merchants at the surface, and damned if I didn't run into my first bit of luck since I last went to sleep at Highever Castle: I found Faryn, looter of qunari blades.

Imagine my shock when I learned that the man had recently sold the blade to Dwyn, the dwarven mercenary I bullied into helping the people of Redcliffe Village. The damned dwarf must have overheard my conversation with Sten about the blade and decided he wanted it for himself (he is something of a weapons collector, and a qunari blade must be rare this far south). It seemed a better-than-even bet that Dwyn would still be in Redcliffe. Once a man fights to defend something, he tends to become attached to it, and it isn't as though the town is in danger of overcrowding lately. Since we were waiting for the wheels of dwarven government to turn anyhow, I thought that a return to Redcliffe might allow me to check in on the arl as well as relieve Dwyn of the sword by whatever means necessary.

Redcliffe itself is recovering nicely, but Arl Eamon's condition is unchanged. Arlessa Isolde still refuses to speak to me, and Eamon's knights are still scouring the countryside for any sign of the Urn of Sacred Ashes. The locals said Dwyn was still living in the village, but when we arrived, he was nowhere to be found. I kicked in the door of his house, for old times' sake. It was not difficult to find where he had stashed the blade; a two-handed qunari weapon is not a dainty thing. I took great pleasure in confiscating it from the underhanded bastard and returning it to Sten at camp.

I could see, in the way Sten turned the blade this way and that, checking its edge for damage, that he was as intimately familiar with its balance as he was with his own limbs. Quietly, as his eyes scoured the blade, he said that I must be an _ashkaari_ to have found a single sword in a country at war. (An _ashkaari_ is, apparently, a sort of enlightened scholar or philosopher.) Once he was certain the sword was not damaged he sheathed it, and what I saw in his gaze then was something that has never quite been directed at me before. It is, I imagine, the way that Loghain Mac Tir's men must have looked at him during the rebellion as he led them to victory.

The loss of Sten's _asala_ was the reason he could not return to his _arishok_, and so I asked him if he would now be leaving us. He replied that he was sent here to answer the question, "What is the Blight?" and that he could provide a more satisfying answer if he had helped end it.

I had assumed that by returning Sten's soul to him, I was also freeing him from my service. I did not realize how deeply I dreaded releasing him until he declared his intention to stay. I think he sensed that some powerful bond had just been formed between us, because he turned away then and spent the rest of the evening talking to my dog.

I appreciate the way he talks to Bricks. He uses the same tone he does with me, and the hound listens to him attentively, with an air of great respect. Sten talks to him of weapons, and of war. He always speaks to him in our common tongue, choosing his words carefully, as though he knows that mabari understand more than just tone. Bricks allows Leliana to caress him and Wynne to bathe him, and he still whines with submissive adoration each time Morrigan passes, but Sten he treats as he would a fellow mabari, and that is so great an honor that I feel almost slighted by comparison.

With a newly-armed and newly loyal qunari in our company, we returned to the gates of Orzammar to find that their Assembly is still deadlocked between two candidates for the throne and civil war is brewing. One of Loghain's lackeys was there, also demanding entrance for himself and his entourage. Perhaps my desire to humiliate the man was what inspired me to pull out the actual treaties and present them to the guard, who - to the lackey's outrage - allowed me to pass, since only the dwarven Assembly had the right to break the seals. The lackey called the Wardens "traitors to the king" and looked on the verge of drawing his sword until I stared him down and told him to consider his men's chances against two Grey Wardens, a mabari war dog, two assassins, two mages, a Qunari, and a golem. His hand left his hilt immediately. I only regret that he had no tail for me to watch tuck between his legs as he retreated.

The situation in Orzammar was even worse than I imagined. It has come to sporadic bloodshed in the streets between the two factions. Dwarves do not express anger with fists, but with axes buried in the skull. One side is saying that Prince Bhelen Aeducan framed one of his brothers for the murder of the other, fatally breaking his father's heart (possibly with the aid of poison) and putting himself conveniently next in line. The other side is saying that Lord Pyral Harrowmont is a doddering weakling who spreads these lies because he fears that Prince Bhelen will abandon tradition, undermining the caste system and breaking Orzammar's isolation from the surface. The chaos in the streets has allowed a third faction, a "casteless" criminal carta from Dust Town, to spill out into the Commons and extort merchants with impunity.

I spoke to representatives of both candidates for the throne, and while I do think the prince has good ideas about how to rule,the way he has chosen to seize power reminds me too much of Loghain and Howe. All but the shadiest sort of people are in agreement that King Endrin Aeducan named Lord Harrowmont over his own son as his chosen successor before he died (though it is ultimately up to the Assembly). I was forced to back one contender or the other if I want help against the Blight, and I cannot bear to side with one who would commit murder to seize power, even if what he hopes to do with that power is admirable. And so it seems that for the next while I shall be running errands for House Harrowmont in hopes of getting an audience with its paranoid patriarch.

Given the trail of blood and betrayal that seems to follow Prince Bhelen's enemies, I cannot say I blame the old man.


End file.
